FridayIt was a bright hot summer’s day on Friday the 15 th of February as campers started to arrive for our Motu Moana camp. This camp the situation was turned around as the littlies (9-12yrs) were to be located up at Mowgli Lodge and the Junior Branch (14+yrs) plus the JJB (13yrs) were co-located at the main camp site (lower), and the littlies gear was kept together to be taken up to Mowgli as a group (see fun later in the story). Plenty of campers came nice and early, which meant lots of games while we waited for everybody to arrive. The JB learned some old favourites of the leaders, and the littlies played a great running game thanks to Abby and Katie!

This camp we had Abby & Katie working with the leaders and they started off the campwith a bang (literally, the game Bang). Pretty soon Dave grouped the littlies together toset up Mowgli. They were arranged in cabin groups, collected their things, only to have to tie their cabin together and move up as a single unit. After pushing, shoving and moving in the opposite direction, the groups moved off at their own speed with one of the leaders supervising through the darkening night. There were no tears but plenty of laughter as foot work and coordination was sorted out. After reaching the lodge, they un-tied themselves and beds were made before moving back down as a group to the main site. Back down at the lower site, placemats were drawn (your partner drew a part of your face (e.g. nose) before swapping to a new partner to draw the next part. Then everyone (JB & Littlies) went back up to Mowgli for lullabies. This was done as the
littlies needed to go to sleep afterwards and we didn’t want them to be excited before
sleep. Turns out they were still excited and took a while to settle down. While the littlies were off to bed, the JB and the JJB were competing in a quiz night.

SaturdaySaturday was another beautiful day and before breakfast, some of the littlies were awakeearly so games of Ninja (ask your children to show you) and music kept them busy before we woke up the rest around 7:30am – then we went down for breakfast.After breakfast, Heba led the littlies in conflict resolution and negotiation. This revolvedaround getting different partners to agree to your wishes. This was things like, cross theline to my side. I can tell you there were many promises (not sure I believed all of them),many lies and many heated discussions about how good the view was on this side or hownice the shade was on that side. Afterwards, Heba asked the question about, were we trying to get the person to our side, or not go to their side. She made a point that if both people had swapped, then both would have won. This was a powerful statement on win-win negotiation rather than win-lose.

After morning tea Tess ran an amazing race. Normally our activities don’t cross multiplesessions but Tess’ activity merged all our kids together to learn how to team build alltogether. In stage 1 the teams ‘crossed the river’, with the whole team having to move 20 meters without touching the grass. They had sheets of newspaper to use, as well as theircreativity. Stage 2 used some CISV trivia. The groups used word cards to create the CISV statement of purpose, and gain a little understanding of why we do what we do! The CISV statement of purpose (as everyone figured out in the end) is ‘CISV educates and inspires action for a more just and peaceful world’. In our third stage, the teams silently learnt a few things about each other, having to stand in a line from first to last. They silently communicated things like ‘stand in alphabetical order, according to the second letter of your Mums first name’, or ‘how long have you been in CISV’. Stage 4 was a water cup filling race where the bag to fill was a long way from the bucket, the cup to fill the bag mysteriously had holes in it and the path between the bucket and bag crossed the other teams path. The leaders made the team leader hold the bag (and so couldn’t help organise) and everyone had to take the cup at least once. At the end the teams had to carry the person holding the bag back to the bucket to refill it. Chaos. 2 extra points were awarded to the team who a) used everyone in the team to carry the bag holder back (that was fun to watch) and b) asked if they could use the team-before-them’s cup (that was thinking outside the box). Then, once the task was judged finished, it was off to the end.

There was a short lunch intermission in between sessions, then we moved onto stage five. Tess’ final part of the activity was to get the Team to convince the other teams why they should be the winner. Some interesting speeches, songs and interpretive dancing followed.

In the late afternoon, Danni ran a re-using water exercise for the littlies and ashock for the water goblins (read “volunteer” leaders). The activity centered on appreciating how much water it takes for daily tasks (e.g. brushing teeth, cooking, cleaning). This was simulated by the group ‘completing’ as many tasks as possible by filling a cup full of water from a bucket, passing it along the line and dumping the cold water on a water goblin’s head. Did I mention cold? After the first round, the groups could re-use the water (some food colour was added to the cup of water to indicate it had been reused, and it was returned to the bucket). The buckets of water slowly turned coloured and then it couldn’t be used. Big praise to Goblin 5 (Leader Aiden) for taking a shower – 50 cups. Rather him than me. Brrr.

Dinner was a spicy chicken or Moroccan curry and apple/boysenberry crumble + ice cream. After dinner everyone gathered together for some skits that were to die for.Tonight’s lullabies were a bit different. During the day we had noticed that there was areally cool fire pit area at the site. Of course a fire was out of the question but 2 UE Boomspeakers and a sound track to suit allowed for an amazing campfire (sans fire) experience. It was really cool to hear all of the camp, including parent helpers,gather together and make some noise. Each littlies cabin had a volunteer JB organised toguide them to and from the fire pit before lullabies and as the “Goodnight” song was sung. The JB team leaders gathered their cabin and took them up to Mowgli lodge for sleep. The singing continued for a while after that and when the JB leaders returned, leaving the littlies with the Leaders group, the JB went on with their night activity.

SundaySunday is always a busy day and this time camp was ending at 11:30am, so straight afterbreakfast the 2 sites were busy packing bags and finding property that had been left outon the line (or playing slugs/Turtles in their sleeping bags). The littlies up at Mowgli Lodge packed up and cabin by cabin the leaders moved them outside the lodge and then took them to the main site and stored their gear inside the quad for security.

While the JB were doing their evaluation of their weekend, Mackenzie led the littlies indifferent energizers before moving on to fun running games, e.g. Monsters & Chickens, which they enjoyed so much, followed by another game where the kids were divided up in groups of Leaders, JCs, Staff and delegates to play an engaging running game to wrap up activity 1 for the day. After morning tea, Dave ran an exercise on thinking outside the box. Teams had to get from one end of the field to the other but had different rules for how they could get there, e.g. everyone carried or everyone in 2 hula-hoops, or passing a ball. The exercise was designed to help us see that even though the task is the same, it can be achieved in different ways. And also to have a final bit of fun before the end of camp.

A big thank you to all the parent helpers though out the weekend, from the organisation team, booking the venue, buying the food or bringing the supplies, to the kitchen staff, and the Sunday cleaners. Also to Tracey for making sure everyone was in the right place at the right time. Also to all the leaders and JB leaders (Abby, Katie, & Kayla) for all yoursupport and willingness to make this weekend work. And finally to the parents for lending us your children which is who we are all doing this for.

If you have ever thought about helping out at camp and getting first-hand experience of what we do, I strongly encourage you to get involved at our next minicamp in Hunua Falls Camp on the weekend of September 20th – 22nd 2019.